Antimicrobial peptidomimetics: reinterpreting nature to deliver innovative therapeutics

Virtually all multicellular organisms must ward off pathogenic microbes in order to survive and thrive on this planet. To accomplish this, most metazoans rely on gene-encoded antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as an essential part of their innate immune system. The role played by AMPs – and by the other umoral and cellular components of innate immunity – is particularly crucial in those organisms (the vast majority) that have not developed the more sophisticated adaptive immune system. Even in higher vertebrates as humans, AMPs like defensins and cathelicidins (e.g., LL-37) do not only have direct microbicidal activity, but they also serve as signals which initiate, mobilize, and amplify adaptive immune host defenses, thus functioning as immunomodulatory and immunostimulatory elements (Giuliani and Rinaldi, 2010)